What is the connection between David Lynch and Billy Wilder?
Goddammit, I’ve posed this question to all my Twin Peaks groups on Facebook, and nobody got it. Now I’m going to give it to you.
“The Emperor Waltz”: the music and the film.
Assistant Deputy Director Gordon Cole of the FBI is a character on Twin Peaks.
Assistant Producer Gordon Cole of Paramount Pictures is an unseen character in Sunset Boulevard. Gordon Cole wanted to borrow Norma’s classic car for a “Crosby picture”—Billy Wilder’s 1949 film The Emperor Waltz, starring Bing Crosby and Joan Fontaine.
The entire film THE EMPEROR WALTZ directed by Billy Wilder is available to watch here
But that’s not all. There’s an artistic, almost metaphysical link, to the David Lynch work and the Billy Wilder work. For all its color and seeming frothiness, The Emperor Waltz the film barely conceals the same awful truth Lynch made clear in episode 8 of the third season of Twin Peaks: that at a particular point during the middle of the 20th century, Evil partnered with the willing Spirit of Man to try to annihilate the human race. Joe McBride you big fat blowhard, I got that drowning mongrel puppies thing too. I was just a little girl when I first saw this movie and the drowning puppies bit shocked me at once—because, you know, puppies. But also because of what Mrs Weisberg taught us in 4th grade class. And, you know, Anne Frank.
Above David Lynch and Billy Wilder: Daniel Barenboim conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker in Strauss’s grandest waltz.
In the Revolution of 1848, Johann Strauss II (or Jr) had sided with the dissidents—the anti-Habsburg faction—while Strauss Sr his father had been an avowed royalist, composing the Radetsky March in honor of the great general who played a large part in suppressing the Revolution. For some time the court looked with misgivings and suspicion at Strauss Jr, however important he proved to the Austrian image.
There’s a file of a police interrogation where the younger Strauss was asked why he had dared to play the Marseillaise. In an Austria of strict censorship, that was a loaded question. Strauss answered, “Because it is good music and good music is what concerns me.”
But the wounds of the revolution gradually healed. Soon Austria had a new emperor. When the emperor celebrated the 40th anniversary of his accession in 1888, Strauss composed a waltz in honor of Franz Josef.
My signal, my flame, my beloved John Wilson conducted this piece in Stockholm 29 March 2019.
"I'll Be Dead Before You Break My Heart" 
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